In Past Show

About Michael Bühler-Rose

In photographs, videos, and installations, Michael Bühler-Rose explores ideas about ritual, image worship, and the metamorphosis and transcendence experienced through religious practices and art objects. Since the age of 14, Bühler-Rose has been studying Sanskrit and practicing Vaishnavism—a branch of Hinduism dedicated to the god Vishnu—and has spent extended periods of time in India. In the artist’s own words, he draws “parallels between the artist as priest, art object as a deity, the gallery as a post-Enlightenment temple and the installation of the artwork as a ritual.” For Removing the Evil Eye (2010), Bühler-Rose photographed a turmeric-dusted coconut with a flame burning at its top, suggesting the material components of a ceremony or sacrament.

American, b. 1980, New Brunswick, New Jersey, based in New York, New York